In their highly regulated environment MROs often rely on paper to document compliance to the authorities and job performance to customers. Some paper documents are required by regulators, and paper is the preferred medium of some lessors and customers.
But now environmental as well as business concerns point toward paperless. IATA is calling for paperless transformation while assuring aviation safety, security, and environmental sustainability. Although many leading players have embraced software solutions that boost efficiency and reduce waste, much more can be done.
AAR’s Brian Sartain, senior vice president of repair and engineering services agrees that there is a renewed urgency for MRO businesses to focus on environmental concerns. “Companies and consumers across industries have an increased focus on sustainability,” he says. “Internal digitization and reducing our usage of natural resources like energy, paper and water are important to us, and we have made quite a few strides in our MRO network, particularly.”
U.S. repair stations are a “kind of untapped market” for the software, asserts Pete Sasson, an MRO veteran and software specialist who recently founded PG Air, a software consulting firm. Apart from the rare case of a perfect paper process, it’s advantageous to go paperless no matter what size you are because it drives so many other efficiency improvements, he says.
Bad Wrap?
“Paper-centric processes can be efficient and cost-effective when applied properly,” says Allan Bachan, managing director of MRO operations at the consultancy, ICF. What’s more, electronic and digital methods have their own challenges. Both actually can be more costly and inefficient depending on how they support MRO, he says. “In fact, we have seen digital methods mirror paper processes rather than replace [them] in many instances, thus adding to overall costs and inefficiencies.”
However, MRO AAR says going paperless would increase their efficiency and reduce waste, which are key objectives in their sustainability plan. “The ability to electronically sign off work cards will cut a significant amount of administrative time in MRO operations,” says AAR’s Sartain. “Eliminating the use of paper and other environmentally impactful materials is a priority always.” Sartain says eliminating time in administrating paper will lead to a direct improvement in profitability since more time can be spent working on the aircraft instead of shuffling paper. AAR believes that improvements will be in the 5-10 percent range. MRO Software provider ULTRAMAIN concurs, saying the true benefit of paperless is that MROs won’t need to make the efficiency vs. environment decision. These two things simply go hand in hand.
Most MROs still use paper as the basis for routing work cards and documents that require official sign off for regulatory officials, Sartain says. “We do believe that we can increase our efficiency approximately 10 percent through the elimination of paper work instructions,” he adds.
“Paper centricity in aviation MRO operations continues to be contingent on the need for documented compliance — regulatory, legal, and financial,” agrees Bachan.
“At this point, aviation authorities do not encourage or discourage paperless operations per se, but they most certainly do have regulations pertaining to them and digital records,” says John Stone, vice president of product management, for ULTRAMAIN. “They need to because when the system of record is purely digital, operators and regulators need to know the integrity of the system is uncompromised.”
Historically, paper records were used to route parts through the process, and operators could stamp and record completion. This paper becomes an official maintenance record that needs to be kept in a safe place, explains Alejandro Mayoral, senior vice president, information technology, for StandardAero. Canada’s Form 1 — for release to service — remains a paper requirement by regulation, according to AJW Technique.
Sajedah Rustom, AJW Techninque’s CEO, says it completed an assessment of shop floor processes to identify opportunities to go digital and paperless. AJW image.
In the leased or mortgaged aircraft/engine ecosystem — more than 65 percent of the world’s airplanes and engines — paper is still “the most common data source for maintenance records,” Bachan says. “Cross-border transfers and registrations of aircraft require perusal, audits, and detailed reviews of these records to assess asset worth, airworthiness, and ownership status.” It’s just “an ongoing reality that owners and lessors still need to have ‘dirty fingerprint’ records, which may also be scanned, processed, and managed as digital images,” Bachan says.
AAR says that there is a renewed urgency for MRO businesses to focus on environmental concerns. AAR image.
Full-cycle and holistic paperless MRO operations are still at least 10 years away, he adds. “Until regulators, lessors, owners, and operators agree on the many supporting protocols, solutions will be confined to select process elements and stakeholders.”
Low-Hanging Fruit
Paper-centered processes can be difficult to scale. Inefficiencies start with the MRO having to print and sort the task cards for its engineers, says ULTAMAIN’s Stone. “This is a big process…sometimes filling rooms full of [boxes of] paper, because the number of task cards is so large.” Task cards include approved checks but also other tasks stemming from service bulletins, airworthiness directives, and engineering orders, as well as deferred maintenance items. “With ULTRAMAIN the entire process is paperless,” Stone says. “Upon receiving electronic pdf task cards from the airline, an MRO using ULTRAMAIN auto ingests them where many thousands of task cards can be auto-scanned very quickly. As part of the scanning/uploading process, ULTRAMAIN separates the data from the rendering of the data where each card becomes data separate from how the pdf card looks.”
Paper can’t be key word-searched and must be stored. It’s very time-consuming, for example, to assess the effectiveness of your maintenance program by reviewing paper records, says Daragh Cunningham, senior director, AMOS Americas. AMOS is developed and maintained by Swiss AviationSoftware, which is owned by Swiss International Airlines and part of the Lufthansa Group.
Completing documentation for paper-based operations can take weeks after the work is done and certifying that all work was accomplished by properly certified and current engineers. “Airlines will not pay without such documentation,” Stone says. “This happens is real time with ULTRAMAIN because it won’t assign work to unqualified staff or accept signoffs from unqualified engineers or inspectors. The audit trail is created as the work is done. Clear, simple, and nonrefutable.”
Historically MRO operations have required a large amount of paper, Mayoral says. “One single component or an engine would have multiple records associated with it, covering logbooks, routers, certificates, inspection records, etc. … Producing, managing, storing, and retrieving [paper documents] are labor-intensive [processes].”
AAR says they are using less paper currently than in years past. “Most MROs are looking at prints and technical documentation through the use of revision-controlled electronic documents instead of printing them out,” according to Sartain. “I think that U. S. airlines and MROs are not as far along in digitization as European MROs due to the costs involved in going paperless and the requirements for regulatory compliance.”
ULTRAMAIN’s Stone says going paperless brings large efficiency gains and related cost savings, which is justification enough for MROs and airlines to switch to paperless operations. “Efficiency goes up, profits goes up, quality goes up, safety goes up, as does customer satisfaction. Regulators are all for systems that improve safety and auditability,” he adds.
Paper Footprint
AAR believes virtually all the tasks that are carried out in the hangar can be digitized, but acknowledges the systems required to make these digital documents official in the eyes of customers and regulatory authorities are quite expensive and difficult to implement. “AAR has digitized delivery of technical documentation and is piloting systems that would enable a completely paperless work package with our customers currently,” Sartain says.
Some aircraft checks require 400 to 500 task cards, involving up to 600 pieces of paper, Sasson says. Multiply those 600 pieces of paper by four or five checks a night, and you’re talking about “reams and reams of paper.” Printing, organizing, binding, and distributing all this paper might take maintenance planners an entire day. Sasson has implemented AMOS maintenance software for several airlines, and is working with cargo carrier, USA Jet, and other airlines and maintenance organizations.
Some paper manuals are low-hanging fruit for electronic conversion, both to streamline processes and reduce waste, Sasson says. The minimum equipment list (MEL) manual, for example, at some airlines might be 1,000 pages long, multiplied by the number of pilots, managers, and directors who need copies.
Managing changes to the massive paper manual can be complicated because it involves both airline operations, which owns and revises it, and maintenance, which also uses it. Every change has to be printed and distributed to maintenance, as well as signed for by that department, so their copy is not found to be out of date when the FAA pays a call.
Is Going Green a Bunch of Hogwash?
Aviation Maintenance took a deeper dive into the environmental aspects of going paperless with John Stone, ULTRAMAIN’s vice president of product management. We asked Stone if it is possible for MROs to eliminate paper 100 percent and what difference that would make to the environment. Since most discarded paper in the U.S. goes into landfills and does not biodegrade or return CO2 to atmosphere and tree harvesting is mitigated by replanting, is there truly a benefit? Here is what he had to say:
Any MRO or airline that transforms paper processes to digital processes will completely eliminate paper in such processes. But until the industry as a whole goes paperless 100 percent elimination of paper is probably not a realistic expectation.
Regarding what difference would it make to the environment to eliminate paper use, that’s an interesting question. All life on earth is carbon-based so we are never eliminating that — ever, but people do wish to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, and measures can be taken to do that. The question is, is elimination of paper one that helps?
Trees (and plants) are not only beneficial, they are necessary and critical because they absorb CO2 and emit O2. By and large paper pulp is produced from farmed trees today (planted and harvested trees) not natural forest trees, so production of paper does not remove trees from the planet. Just the opposite, the more tree farms that exist, that would not otherwise exist except due to paper pulp production, the more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and the more O2 is produced.
In light of tree farms one can make an argument that the more that paper is used the more tree farms will exist and consequently the more CO2 will be removed from the air. Regardless, whether a tree is harvested for paper production or grows old, dies, and decays in a forest, in the end it existed in the ecosystem. In doing so does a tree absorb more CO2 during its life than it returns as it decays after it dies? Paper ends up in landfills, no doubt about it, but it is also recycled to make other paper products. How many times can that be done for a given piece of paper? What impact does that have? How much energy is needed to do it? What’s the net effect of all of this overall? Opinions vary.
What we do know is that oxygen makes up 21 percent of our atmosphere where CO2 makes up less than one half of one percent (.04 percent) so CO2 makes up a very small percentage of the atmosphere. Furthermore, of the small percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, how much comes from biodegrading trees/paper? Any at all? Considering it all, how much meaningful reduction in CO2 in the atmosphere can be realized by not using paper vs using paper? Environmentally speaking, does not producing and using paper matter? Does not growing tree farms matter?
If you look at how much CO2 is generated by shipping, flying, and trucking paper to where it’s used, reducing its use would undeniably reduce CO2 in the atmosphere generated from transporting it. One would think just doing that would be valuable in reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.
An airline’s maintenance program manual is also a good candidate for conversion, Sasson says. These manuals — which spell out a carrier’s maintenance procedures — can be “a couple thousand pages long.”
“Paper introduces many inefficiencies,” agrees James Elliott, senior business architect, aerospace & defense, for IFS, the provider of Maintenix MRO software. Examples are “time spent on data entry, inaccurate re-keying of information from paper into the maintenance information system [MIS], and inefficient search and retrieval.”
Elliott asserts that “paper in any process is a bottleneck,” as it is a “single-user medium.” He cites the case of a plane full of passengers that must wait until “the mechanic fills out a paper form, walks it to the cockpit for a captain’s signature, and then returns it to maintenance operations.” The cash and goodwill cost can be significant, he says. The right software can make the entire process digital, faster and even safer.
Duncan Aviation
Although paper is far from the worst ecological issue in the aviation industry, it’s an issue that can be mitigated via software systems that force process redesign.
There are many ways to reduce paper footprint. Bizjet MRO, Duncan Aviation, developed electronic work order and signoff systems back in 2007, says Rich Teel, IT systems and programming manager for the company.
“We do believe that we can increase our efficiency approximately 10 percent through the elimination of paper work instructions,” says AAR’s Brian Sartain, SVP repair and engineering services. AAR image.
In addition to its business advantages, the software probably saves at least half a million pieces of paper a year, Teel estimates. That’s just counting the work order header pages and associated paperwork for the more than 50,000 work orders the MRO processes every year. The savings are actually much more than that since many other activities now documented in the software previously required paper, he says.
Duncan Aviation also plans to roll out a new version of its work order system that can run on a smart phone, he says. Technicians will be able to document and sign off on their work using phones, instead of having to get out of an airplane and go to a computer terminal, because the new process will not require a badge swipe.
The new system also will allow mechanics at all of the MRO’s satellite locations, as well as its rapid response teams, to sign off on work via their phones. They won’t have to look for a computer that’s hooked up to the company’s network. The new system will allow them to use a browser-based application to communicate with the work order system.
Maintenix
Qantas and Executive Jet Management (EJM), longtime Maintenix customers, are ahead of the paper curve, Elliott says. Qantas has been on board for a decade and Executive Jet Management (EJM), a bizjet charter operator, went live with an FAA-certified solution in 2008.
EJM’s implementation of e-signature translated into environmental as well as business gains. “A typical work order for EJM might be 200 pages long,” Elliott says.
“A mechanic might have to flick through every single page just to identify the open tasks and then make that into a separate list for the next shift. That might take 20-30 minutes and it could be easy to miss things,” he says.
The company estimates that the efficiencies within shift turnover activities alone save up to 10 labor hours each day. It also attributes a 60 percent reduction in work package setup time and nearly $400,000 in yearly labor cost savings to the solution.
AJW Technique
AJW Technique uses around 150 boxes of paper per year, says Sajedah Rustom, CEO. But this has already been reduced significantly, as technician manuals are now electronic. “We would expect potentially a further 30 percent reduction related to future digitization projects,” she says.
The Canadian component MRO recently completed a day-long assessment of shop floor processes — from receiving all the way through the final production process — in order to identify opportunities to go digital and paperless, Rustom says. “I want technicians to spend most of their time touching components and repairing them,” versus doing paperwork. This is an environmental issue but also an efficiency issue, she says.
AJW Technique is looking at technologies such as bar coding, voice recognition, data analytics, and AI to increase efficiencies and reduce paper usage. She expects bar coding to speed up the induction process, for example. Voice recognition could be helpful in initial diagnostics, and AI and more advanced technologies could play a role in areas such as the costing of work — if the same workscopes on the same part types have been performed on a frequent basis. Rustom expects to have made significant progress on the paperless initiative by mid-2020.
Hurdles
Major obstacles to going paperless involve “the vast maturity gaps with technology adoption and readiness in the operator and MRO ecosystems,” Bachan explains. “Practically all [MRO] tasks can potentially be made fully digital” — from source publications through to work instructions and signed-off tasks proving compliance.
“Electronic signature is probably the biggest hurdle,” Sasson says. Because everything is called out in maintenance manuals, adopting e-signature involves a “pretty intensive revision” to the manuals plus regulatory approval. This is manpower-intensive, which makes it difficult for lean-running U.S. MROs. AMOS and Maintenix provide this function.
Another paper-intensive area is OEM documents, Cunningham notes. In the hangar mechanics often print relevant pages from the aircraft maintenance manual (AMM). After a task is completed, that paper has to be thrown out because of AMM revision control. “Mechanics can’t just keep a copy of an AMM section in their pocket” and reuse it another time, he says. OEMs revise manuals frequently, so mechanics have to check the AMM each time they prepare to do anything.
Without a mobile version of the manual, the mechanic has to use paper. You have to print the task card and a 2-10-page section of the AMM. AMOS can be used on any mobile device, he says.
Maintenix also supports maintenance operations, including e-signatures, on mobile devices, Elliott says.
Duncan Aviation’s electronic signoff is essentially an electronic signature, Teel says. The MRO also has a project with CAMP Systems, the maintenance tracking company. “They used to send us hundreds of inspection items required for each job” in paper format, Teel says. The MRO is working on downloading that data electronically into its work order system instead. (A single inspection can involve hundreds of pieces of paper.) So on the MRO side technicians are in effect filling out CAMP’s task cards electronically rather than manually, and the data is being stored in the MRO’s computer systems. Teel estimates this will save at least 300,000 pages of paper a year.
777: Paperless Airplane?
The Boeing 777 was in production in 1995. “No paper was used to design and produce that aircraft,” says Allan Bachan, managing director of MRO operations at the consultancy, ICF. So the opportunity to maintain a digital — fully paperless — thread for each aircraft coming off the production line has existed for the last 24 years.”
There are an estimated two million part numbers making up the 777, he says. “If we conservatively assume one sheet of paper for each, then that’s how much paper was eliminated” by Boeing at the front end. “The irony is that the management of each aircraft throughout its lifecycle will incur an estimated 10 times that (design) volume of paper.”
Yet conversion to mobile is not widespread. Recent IFS research on commercial aviation mobility showed that only 17 percent of respondents could access an entire enterprise software suite on a mobile device, Elliott says.
The study results show that overall, only 31 percent of respondents regularly accessed their enterprise software using a mobile device. Of the respondents that stated they could access enterprise software using a mobile device, only 14 percent could access all functionality in this fashion, while the remaining respondents could access some modules of a suite but not others.
AJW Technique is looking at electronic data interchange (EDI) for paperless exchanges of quotes with its customers. The MRO is also reaching out to its supply chain, both the component OEMs and smaller, local suppliers, Rustom says. “It could be something as simple as a data link.” AMOS also enables data exchange between customers and third-party partners, thanks in part to EDI standards defined by IATA.
Going paperless in MRO drives many other efficiency improvements, says Pete Sasson, software consultant and founder of PG Air.
PG Air image.
In all probability, however, some paper will remain. One example is engine logbooks, which need to accompany engines that are sent out to third-party shops, Sasson says.
“There may still be printed information in the form of labels or other types of identification, … which would travel with the components through the maintenance process,” Mayoral adds.
Others point out that viewing AMMs on a mobile device might not be a good experience on a tiny screen, so that printing pages from the manual may remain a common practice.
Before a new military or civil aircraft can take to the skies it must run a gamut of ground and flight tests to verify that it functions as intended and is safe to fly. Ground-based structural tests are an important element as material “coupons,” components, and entire airframes are subjected to forces, stresses, and conditions that simulate conditions they will encounter in flight. For this article we consulted experts in military and business aviation.
Strength and fatigue tests are key parts of the regimen. Static strength testing involves “applying intense load conditions to the structure to ensure it can withstand load[s],” explains Albert Dirkzwager, director structural integrity, test, and simulation for Textron Aviation. Fatigue testing involves “applying multiple cycles of normal flight conditions to the airframe to simulate thousands of hours of flight time to prove the durability of the airframe,” he says.
Similarly U.S. Air Force ground testing validates that the strength, durability and damage tolerance, stiffness, and mass balance requirements have been met, says Gregory Schoeppner, chief of the Structures Branch, in the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.
He describes a “building-block approach,” moving from testing material coupons, subelements, elements, subcomponents, components, and finally to complete airframes. This approach is “typically used to mitigate manufacturing scale-up risks while maturing design and analysis tools to accurately predict the behavior of increasing[ly] complex structures.”
The most granular level of structural testing is at the coupon level, agrees Victor Alfano, senior director of strategic programs for NTS, a testing company with 28 labs in North America. These small material samples provide customers an understanding of fundamental material behavior under different conditions that can be applied to the design of aircraft components and structures. Coupons can be tested for characteristics such as tensile strength, fatigue, and crack propagation, and loads can be applied under extreme temperature conditions. NTS recently tested an engine cowling that required temperatures as high as 1,400-1,500 degrees F. while applying loads, Alfano says.
Test Articles
USAF full-scale strength test (FSST) and full-scale durability (fatigue) test (FSDT) require a dedicated airframe, each, Schoeppner says. These tests also require specially designed load frames that can apply distributed loads to the fuselage, wings, and empennage; discrete loads to the landing gear attach structure; and pressure loads to pressurized compartments in the airframe. “The load frame and facilities for each of these tests can take many months to a couple of years to design, manufacture, and set up.”
Scott Maher, a staff scientist at Gulfstream, says they typically dedicate one airframe, including all the associated components, to static strength testing and another airframe to fatigue and damage tolerance testing. Gulfstream images.
The same is true for all-new bizjet designs. Typically one airframe, including all the associated components, is dedicated to static strength testing and one airframe, to fatigue and damage tolerance testing, says Scott Maher, staff scientist, Gulfstream. (Some of the miscellaneous components may be tested separately from the overall airframe for convenience, he says.) The static strength testing begins and concludes first, as a portion of it typically supports first-flight safety, and all of it must be completed before certification. Fatigue testing usually takes longer, but only a portion of the fatigue cycling needs to be complete for certification. Many of the separate test schedules overlap.
Dirkzwager says that while the number of articles depends on the program, the Citation Longitude used “multiple different test articles and full-scale airframe articles… .”
Test Gamut
In addition to basic static strength and fatigue testing, Textron lists additional tests, such as:
Residual Strength Testing – static strength testing while simulating failed structural components to prove redundancy of the structure.
Bird Strike Testing – FAA requirement to demonstrate the safety of the aircraft if impacted by a bird.
Operational Tests – to demonstrate that flight control and other systems operate properly under various loading scenarios.
Tire Burst Testing – to demonstrate reliability of the airframe in the event of a blown tire.
Landing Gear Drop Testing – to verify that the energy absorption of the landing gear system behaves properly under landing impact.
Impact Testing – to impact various components with possible real-world scenarios to ensure the robustness of the design.
Extreme High/Low Temperature Testing – involving some of the preceding tests.
Although there are no requirements to test to failure for any component, according to Albert Dirkzwager, director structural integrity, test, and simulation for Textron Aviation, occasionally the company will intentionally test a component to failure to help refine their analytical techniques and ensure they are designing the most weight-efficient structure. Textron images.
Analysis
“Since it is impractical to test the response of the airframe to the thousands of different load cases within the design envelope, analysis and design models are relied upon to predict the response of the airframe to the full-range of loading conditions,” Schoeppner says. The main objective of the structures testing is to validate analysis and design models for the airframe loads, strength, durability and damage tolerance, and dynamics.
“Advancements in structural analysis and the ability to model individual parts with more accuracy and in greater detail have allowed us to minimize design margins and perceived design conservatism,” he says. This is “particularly beneficial for reducing structural weight to meet design goals.” But it makes strength and fatigue testing all the more critical in discovering design shortfalls and oversights, he adds.
Textron Aviation’s external loads team analytically “flies” the aircraft through possible gusts, maneuvers, and landings which it could experience to compute the maximum forces on the airframe, Dirkzwager says. The structural analysis team narrows these cases down to a few dozen for each component and specifies the forces to be applied during the test.
“For cyclic tests, we develop typical usage profiles based on measured flight data of similar aircraft” to help “develop how often and at what load levels to flex the wings and the number of pressurization/depressurization cycles.”
Extra Margins
Fatigue testing builds in wide margins. “We are required by the FAA to test three-times the number of cycles as the life of the aircraft to capture variability in the materials and flight profiles,” Dirkzwager says.
For static strength, limit loads are the maximum loads to be expected in service, Gulfsteam’s Maher says. The regulations require a 1.5 factor of safety beyond limit loads (ultimate loads). “The structure must be shown by analysis, supported by testing, to have no detrimental permanent deformation under limit loads and to not fail under ultimate loads,” he says.
Generally testing is completed to the prescribed design static load or cyclic load duration and it is not required to test until failure, Maher says. “That said, it is often advantageous to test to failure to confirm failure modes and validate analysis methodologies. Also, any test data beyond the original prescribed design load is like money in the bank if future variants have higher design loads.”
There are no requirements to test to failure for any component, Textron’s Dirkzwager says. “Frequently bird strike tests do significant damage to the airframe that requires repair prior to running subsequent tests.” And occasionally, “we will intentionally test a component to failure to help refine our analytical techniques to ensure that we are designing the most weight-efficient structure.”
The design service life of an aircraft can be defined in flight hours, flight or pressurization cycles, or years, Schoeppner says. The FSDT simulates the cyclic loading that the aircraft will experience during service and demonstrates that the aircraft design is sufficient to meet the design service life. At a minimum, the durability test demonstrates that the airframe can survive two lifetimes of usage.
The requirement for the FSST test is to demonstrate that the airframe will not fail when loaded to design ultimate load (DUL). “There is no requirement that any components of the airframe be tested to failure.” However, after demonstrating DUL capability, the FSST is often loaded to failure to determine the ultimate strength capability of the airframe and to provide data to further validate strength models.
Shown here is NTS’s state-of-the-art Lightning Center of Excellence laboratory. The electrical characteristics of the different types of lightning flashes, and the resulting surges and fields from a strike, are complex. The company’s engineers have studied the effects of lightning on a structure or system by isolating the components of the lightning waveforms and electrical/magnetic fields, and NTS evaluates their effects through individual simulations. The company’s labs include specialized equipment to simulate the electrical characteristics of natural lightning as well as the transients it induces in electrical and electronic systems. NTS says it offers lightning testing at multiple facilities across the United States. NTS image.
Facilities
Gulfstream’s building covers more than two acres – 92,252 sq. ft., with a volume under the roof of 3,690,080 cu. ft., says John Kenan, director, flight test operations. The facility has a structural floor with concrete and steel reinforcement 5 ft. thick to support the loads that are required for structural testing. Landing gear loads are on the order of 100,000 pounds. Gulfstream has tested components and coupons to loads in excess of 500,000 pounds, he says.
Gulfstream also has a negative pressure chamber for flammability tests that is vented and filtered to exhaust outside the building, he says. Burners are positioned by a robot so that personnel are not required to enter the chamber to move from calibration thermocouple/calorimeter to the test article and back. “We use an infrared camera to record and monitor temperatures across the entire test article in real time.”
Many coupons are either conditioned and/or tested at temperatures and/or humidity other than room temperature, Kenan says. Environmental chambers vary in size from a few cu. ft. to 16 ft.x40 ft. and 8 ft. high. “We test at [temperatures] … from -70 to +700 degrees F.”
Textron Aviation’s structural test facility includes about 51,000 sq. ft. of test floor to a ceiling height of 50 ft., Dirkzwager says. The building features an overhead crane hook, an integrated hydraulic supply system, and an air system. It also includes a physical test lab, instrumentation lab, and engineering offices, plus an additional 20,000-sq.-ft facility for systems testing, including environmental/bleed air testing and fuel system testing.
Equipment
Gulfstream uses Moog digital load control equipment with more than 584 channels, Kenan says. “Our transducers are monitored using 15,500 channels of HBM computer-controlled data-acquisition systems.” A typical full-scale test will use over 100 actuators and 5,000 channels of data acquisition. Tests are monitored and displayed using more than a dozen HD video cameras, several at frame rates up to several thousand frames per second. “As we set up a test, we can choose from an inventory of 940 hydraulic actuators, 800 load transducers, and 550 deflection transducers.”
Textron cites MTS and MOOG/FCS control equipment and the ability to run 20 large-scale independent tests as well as to control position, pressure, and load. The company also has “drop towers” for drop-testing landing gears. One of these handles heavier-gross-weight landing gear testing and another, lighter-weight testing, Dirkzwager says. Textron also uses multiple load frames for material and small component testing, temperature/humidity/altitude environmental chambers, birdstrike canon, hail gun with the ability to shoot 2-in. hail, and a burn test chamber.
Increasing computing power and the development of dedicated tools for life analysis and derivation of non-standard stress concentration factors make estimates more accurate, Gulfstream’s Maher says. Control parameters can be changed on the fly, whereas “in the analog days, this would have been accomplished with a jeweler’s screwdriver one channel at a time.”
Better computing power and advanced finite element analysis allow us to model the structure with more precision and detail to eliminate high-stress areas that could result in lower-than-desired life span, Textron’s Dirkzwager says.
Direct digital controllers allow the addition of features to stabilize the test article, automatically speed the cycling rate, and tune the system, which have made a dramatic impact on the calendar time required to run tests – while at the same time enhancing accuracy and redundancies, Dirkzwager says. Test control systems can control over 100 load points with additional accuracy, and durability tests have become increasingly efficient.
“Right-sizing load cylinders, servo valves, and transducers to maximize performance and to take advantage of the improved accuracy of the test control system and data acquisition has also played into improved test performance.”
The number of available channels and the reliability and performance have all increased massively, Gulfstream’s Kenan says. In the mid-80s we had 32 channels of load control and 1,000 channels of data acquisition. “Due to the limited number of channels, we had to rewire the load and data systems between each test condition.” During more recent test campaigns, however, “we used 115 channels of load control (with 160 available) and recorded 6,200 channels of data.” Modern data acquisition systems “have allowed us to significantly increase the number of transducers, the frequency of their sampling, and the accuracy of those readings. Incidentally, all transducers can now be simultaneously sampled virtually, eliminating data slew.”
In-flight connectivity is expected to become the largest global aviation segment for mobile satellite communications in the future with cabin and passenger experience as key areas. New revenues, cutting turn times and keeping digital natives happy will be some of the goals for the players in this market.
We’ve come a long way from the early days of on-board Wi-Fi. Broadband satellite networks provide oceanic as well as terrestrial coverage. But that was just the first step. As part of the push for passenger loyalty and revenues, some airlines are eyeing branded, personalized connectivity services as well as basic Internet access.
The cabin itself is becoming a focus for upgrading the passenger experience. Boeing and Airbus – along with teams of suppliers – are developing seats, galleys, and other components that will feed status data and other information into a wireless network to improve service and reduce turn times.
High-quality onboard Wi-Fi will be ubiquitous worldwide within the next five years, predicts Dominic Walters, vice president marketing communications and strategy at Inmarsat Aviation.
When these efforts will reach critical mass is an open question. But the trend is unmistakable, driven by the prospect of new revenues, reduced maintenance cost, and the need to meet the expectations of the digital natives who eventually will make up the mass of the flying public. Key questions are how widespread cabin connectivity and Internet passenger services are today and how fast and how challenging revenue growth will be.
Fleet Equipage
At the end of 2018 about 30 percent of the worldwide commercial fleet was equipped with broadband Internet Wi-Fi, estimates Alexis Hickox, head of commercial aviation network services marketing with Collins Aerospace. She expects this to grow to around 70 percent by 2023. Further out, an Inmarsat/London School of Economics (LSE) study estimates that by 2035 inflight connectivity will be ubiquitous worldwide. Collins’ commercial connectivity platform, CabinConnect, has about four airlines flying and a couple more contracted, she says. Norwegian, for example, went live in December 2018.
In-flight connectivity is expected to become the largest global aviation segment for mobile satellite communications in the future, says Amanda King, vice president and general manager of connected hardware, for Honeywell Connected Enterprise, Aerospace. She predicts that around 23,000 commercial aircraft will be connected by 2027, up from 7,400 in 2017.
Honeywell’s JetWave is “the exclusive hardware that enables air transport, regional, and business aviation aircraft to connect to Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band service – GX Aviation,” which can provide “speeds up to 50 Mbps,” she says.
Within the next five to 10 years, approximately 65 percent of all commercially operated aircraft will be connected using a “broadband pipeline,” via Ka-Band or Ku-Band, estimates Lukas Bucher, head of product connectivity for Lufthansa Technik (LHT). Additionally, there will be two or three air-to-ground networks available in the U.S. and Europe, he says, and maybe in China and India at a later date.
The Inmarsat Ka-band satellites provide a “seamless global service,” Hickox says. “They own the whole network, so there are no dropouts.” On GX the beams basically overlap, so “there’s more capacity and bandwidth on congested air routes.” Ku-band satellites, by contrast, use a “patchwork quilt of satellite networks.”
Inmarsat Aviation expects high-quality onboard Wi-Fi to be ubiquitous worldwide within the next five years, says Dominic Walters, vice president marketing communications and strategy. “Once this saturation point is reached, simply offering Wi-Fi to passengers will no longer be a point of differentiation for airlines.” That’s when the focus will quickly shift towards differentiation via innovative passenger services, such as serving targeted offers via e-commerce portals, based on passenger preferences and past purchasing behavior.
Honeywell and Collins
Honeywell and Collins are value-added resellers for Inmarsat’s GX Aviation service. Honeywell’s Inmarsat agreement, announced in November 2018, marked Honeywell’s entry into the airline cabin services market, allowing it to market connectivity services, as well as JetWave hardware, directly to airline customers. These services, known as GoDirect in the bizav market, were rebranded in June with the launch of Honeywell Forge for Airlines. This software includes solutions for flight operations, flight efficiency, and connected maintenance in a single user interface.
Honeywell Forge for Airlines focuses on increasing airline profitability and efficiency. Passenger entertainment applications enabled by the GX broadband satellites would be offered by airline partners. Honeywell’s new airline services provide advanced analytics for improved maintenance, repair, and overhaul and less airplane downtime, King says. Performance data can be gathered in real time via JetWave or while the aircraft is on the ground.
Honeywell Forge for Airlines offers “actionable analytics and insights” that airlines can use to lower costs and improve the passenger experience, King says, providing operators a comprehensive look at fleet and environment data. The company has added Nippon Cargo Airlines and Kuwait Airways to its list of more than 32 global customers already using Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency, including carriers such as Lufthansa, Etihad, Finnair, Japan Airlines, and Turkish Airlines.
Boeing and its partners are working on an intelligent and smart cabin system called i+sCabin and plan to test technologies this year as part of Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program.Boeing image.
Collins
Collins also offers “services over and above pure airtime,” including both efficiency and entertainment features, Hickox says. CabinConnect includes a portal for airline operations and management.
“We customize the airtime packages we have with Inmarsat to address the airline needs,” with passenger Internet access options ranging from basic messaging to streaming/premium services via Collins’ software and network management systems. CabinConnect supports applications such as onboard retail management, crew functions, advertising and sponsorship, audio/video on demand, news and weather, destination information, and moving map.
But airline return on investment is unlikely to come from passenger connectivity revenues alone, she advises. “We really encourage our airlines, as much as they can, to leverage that broadband pipe across the rest of the aircraft, to use it for the [cabin] crew, and for as many applications as you can support,” including the operational side of the business.
Collins also has an “intelligent router that can take non-safety-related cockpit data, like weather, and “maybe route that data through to the broadband link in the back rather than the more expensive link in the front.”
Predictive maintenance is an example. “I’m talking about the ability to take information from sensors that may be attached to any part of the aircraft,” Hickox explains. This way the crew can determine whether something is faulty and file real-time tech log and maintenance log reports in flight that could reduce turnaround times on the ground. Collins is working with a number of airlines on that type of business model. It also offers applications such as fuel consumption to improve airline operational efficiency.
“The top [passenger] application is social media,” Hickox says. This includes messaging via apps like Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Collins also offers premium packages where passengers can stream data from Instagram or YouTube or Netflix.
Advertising and sponsorship features allow airline partners to pay for packages so the carriers can provide them for free or perhaps for watching a short video, she says. That’s one way to monetize connectivity.
A payment gateway is also an integral part of the offering, she says. “Obviously if we’re providing Internet packages, we have to be able to charge for those.”
CabinConnect can be integrated with an airline’s ticketing system, so it would be possible for a passenger to choose an Internet package at that time but still upgrade onboard. If it’s integrated with the frequent flier database, an airline could identify premium customers in their loyalty program and offer them free or discounted service at the time of booking.
What airlines offer depends on the way they want to get passengers to use the service, Hickox says. For example, they could offer free basic service but have you pay for premium. Collins has tools that can manage packages by time, data, or activity.
A passenger can download a GUI from the server to any personal device to watch movies or access the Internet from phones, iPads, or laptops. The passenger portal has a tile-based interface, so you can click on the Internet tile and then choose a package. “We provide the pipe – the airline then decides how they want to package that pipe,” Hickox says.
One of Boeing’s goals is to enable the collection and exchange of information to generate a real-time status for all aircraft cabin areas, according to Jeff Roberts, senior manager for product strategy and future airplane development with Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). Boeing image.
There are typically three tiers – messaging, social, and streaming. There is content – like free movies – on the server, but the server is also the access point for the Internet.
Intelligent Cabin
Airbus is flight testing its “Airspace Connected Experience,” platform, which collects data from cabin components such as seats and galleys to improve the passenger experience, increase airline revenues, and boost efficiency. Future benefits could include booking of bin space, setting seat positions, and customizing inflight IFE offers, the company says.
Boeing and its partners are working on a similar project and plan to test technologies this year as part of Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program. An i+sCabin (intelligent and smart cabin) consortium, launched in 2018, is laying the groundwork with an onboard network standard. A key goal is to enable “the collection and exchange of information to generate a real-time status for all aircraft cabin areas, which can be particularly valuable in predicting potential faults,” explains Jeff Roberts, senior manager for product strategy and future airplane development with Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). A networked system would enhance passenger experience and optimize airline maintenance cycles and cabin operations.
Implementation and testing of the first version of the cabin communication standard is expected towards the end of 2019 and in the course of 2020, with completion in 2021, he says. Partner competencies range from seat actuation to cabin management systems, from cabin interior hardware and connectivity to aircraft operations and integration.
The consortium plans to work through ARINC’s Cabin Systems Subcommittee to develop an interface standard for connecting cabin equipment to an intelligent cabin network, Roberts says. A Cabin Secure Media Independent Messaging ad-hoc group was formally chartered in the last few weeks. While the standard will leverage commercial network standards as much as possible, there may be unique aspects such as specific messaging, network configuration, and security to support unique aviation requirements, he says. Among the tasks will be the selection of standard protocols, development of standard application-layer messaging, a mechanism for commissioning/joining devices to the network, software data-loading methods, and network security mechanisms.
Honeywell’s JetWave is the exclusive hardware that enables air transport, regional and business aviation aircraft to connect to Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band service – GX Aviation. Honeywell images.
“The airlines have expressed their challenges with managing faults in the cabins, or some catering needs, etc.,” says John Craig, chief engineer, cabin and network systems and aviation security with BCA. “So we are figuring out how to standardize these interfaces” and message formats to get the data off the airplane and into the airline’s back office — data like the status of the coffee maker in the galley, seat issues, and food and beverage status.
Roberts cites the example of Etihad, which sends a team of mechanics to an airplane at the gate “to manually test everything inside the cabin to make sure it’s working properly.” But they would prefer for the airplane to check everything and tell them it’s fine – “they want the cabin to take care of itself.”
Technology like smart seats exists today, but it needs to be able to communicate and be customized to particular airline needs. Some airlines might not want to inform the cabin crew about a seat malfunction, he says. They’d rather receive data aggregated on a weekly basis. What’s needed is the network and software to receive the data and aggregate it.
Cabin Connectivity Market: Phenom or Phantom?
Estimates of this emerging market vary widely but give an idea of the possibilities. Oliver Wyman estimates that cabin connectivity upgrades in 2018 amounted to 40 percent of the 1-billion-euro upgrade and retrofit market for IFE, according to Archag Touloumian, Oliver Wyman principal. By 2025 he expects the cabin connectivity upgrade market to double in size, reaching up to 800 million euros.
But airlines’ capacity to develop the cabin connectivity market will depend on their ability to offer it to their passengers for “acceptable” prices, says Jerome Bouchard, Oliver Wyman partner. That means finding a way to reduce connectivity costs for all the players in the value chain.
Lufthansa Technik sees its addressable market, 2019-2026 — from initial installation (retrofit) and upgrades — as $8.6 billion, including engineering and certification, hardware, and touch labor.
LHT also notes some findings from a 2019 Euroconsult report:
At year-end 2018 over 8,200 aircraft were equipped with in-flight connectivity. This number is forecasted to increase to around 20,500 by 2028.
At year-end 2018 almost 110 airlines provided in-flight connectivity.
At year-end 2018 more than 6,300 commercial aircraft had satellite connectivity while around 1,800 had air-to-ground connectivity.
The London School of Economics (LSE), in partnership with Inmarsat, forecasts that broadband-enabled ancillary revenues for airlines will reach $30 billion by 2035. All told, inflight broadband has the potential to create a $130-billion global market within the next 20 years, says Dominic Walters, vice president of marketing communications and strategy with Inmarsat Aviation, citing the study.
Wi-Fi-enabled revenues would be generated through such means as premium content, broadband access fees, e-commerce, advertising, and sponsorship, Walters says. Airlines with a “retail mindset” will be able to “reap the rewards of these previously untapped revenue streams.”
There’s also an opportunity for IFE providers to drive revenues, with commoditized screens and subscription-based offers, says Oliver Wyman’s Bouchard. “SaaS [software as a service] is a very attractive business model, as passengers are captive customers during their flight.” An IFE manufacturer, for example, could propose an “aircraft cloud service” and get royalties from the software/apps business hosted in the aircraft. It could be an attractive model for the airlines, as they would be buying a service, so it would be an operational cost.
Historically, however, cabin connectivity has been a tough profit proposition for airlines. Equipage with the state-of-the-art is very expensive and current service in some cases may not be up to expectations. Even the optimistic LSE study concedes that current broadband service is “often of variable quality, with patchy coverage, slow speeds, and low data limits” and that “only around 25 percent of planes in the air [are] offering [passengers] some form of onboard broadband.”In many cases the content is stored onboard the aircraft, says Tim Kuder, senior industry analyst for commercial aerospace with Frost & Sullivan. “So I’m flying from Hawaii to LA and watching movies on my phone over Wi-Fi, but it’s just coming off of the server. It’s not connected to the Internet.”
There are also clear concerns to be addressed. “Reliability and cybersecurity must be key areas of focus,” says Oliver Wyman’s Touloumian. “Cyber-secured cabin connectivity is a growing concern, considering that passengers will be offered a set of personalized services such as in-flight online shopping.”
The Internet of Things (IoT) is critical to cabin connectivity, on the ground and in the air, Honeywell’s King explains. IoT enables real-time analytics, for one thing. “IoT and IoT devices will enable access to more data” and insights into passenger behavior, so that airlines can improve travel experiences. As an example, cabin crews could access this information in real time to see if passengers need to buckle their seatbelts. Predictive maintenance capabilities also could help eliminate costly and irritating plane delays and cancellations.
IoT eventually will become crucial, LHT’s Bucher says. Checking functions such as lighting, seat occupancy, belts, bin space, and lavatory occupancy “will only work if sensors are gathering data.”
LHT has 15 years’ experience in connectivity work. Since creating the Lconnect brand for external customers in 2015, the MRO has delivered more than 400 aircraft across more than 10 aircraft types, from the 737 to the A380. More than a dozen operators are flying aircraft with LHT installations.
The Future
One of the services that Boeing is working on is the ability for passengers to make payments from their own devices via Apple Pay, for example, says Kristin Kuhn, senior manager for strategy and market development, with BCA. A lot of times today, a passenger has to hand a credit card to a flight attendant.
Or maybe passengers could bring a cabin issue to the airline’s attention directly, she says, like crowd sourcing. Then it becomes a maintenance event that will get addressed even if the attendant is distracted, Craig adds.
Generally speaking, seamless passenger services like booking dinner and theater reservations via aircraft connectivity are not mainstream yet, Kuhn says.
What about traditional IFE? News reports indicate that some airlines are scrapping seatback IFE for wireless entertainment via personal devices in their narrow-body aircraft. But Collins’ Hickox predicts that wide-bodies will retain in-seat IFE, particularly for premium customers. “I don’t think that in-seat will ever die out entirely, but it will be a mix” of both in-seat and personal devices.
Passengers on long-haul flights also will be able to do “second screening,” using a personal device, for example, as a remote control for the onboard IFE screen.
Inmarsat currently has four GX satellites in operation and plans to triple this number by 2024, as part of a long-term strategy to develop the most agile and cost-effective constellation, Walters says. “Once the next phase of network development is complete, it will be able to immediately relocate capacity in line with flight patterns, new airline routes, and seasonal demand surges across the globe, future-proofing the ability for airline customers to invest in a consistently high quality of service.”
Inmarsat envisions applications such as fingerprint and iris scanning and transmission during flight to streamline immigration processes, reducing time spent in arrivals and boosting passenger satisfaction.
Based on known consumer behavior on the ground, any available onboard bandwidth will be used, LHT’s Bucher says. “And, most likely, it will never be enough.” However, demand eventually will lead to lower costs per Mbyte and increase the number of economically viable use cases.
But what will really move the market forward will be the ability to provide “high-speed, resilient broadband connectivity,” driven by Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) connectivity and 5G technologies, says Archag Touloumian, Oliver Wyman principal. 5G could replace satellite connectivity at lower altitudes and on the ground, he adds.
Borescopes are at least as important to engine health as endoscopes are to human health – probably much more so. The aviation gear is used daily to visually check engine innards for cracks and other damage. The scopes shine a light on turbine blades and other components to assess their condition without having to take an engine apart.
Today’s high-definition, connected video borescopes are a far cry from rigid and fiber optic scopes. Who knows what the future holds?
Probably we will see more automation. “Imagine if the scope knew where it was going automatically,” asks Frank Lafleur, senior product manager for Olympus. With Big Data it may perhaps become possible to teach a scope how to go into an engine and identify the things it sees. We’re still many years away from having a scope do an inspection by itself, but there will be more and more inspection-assist features in coming years, he predicts.
Aviation borescopes come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide range of capabilities and price tags. At the high end are machines that can perform measurements to tiny dimensions with great accuracy and repeatability. Less pricey, mid-range scopes provide technicians most of what they need without overkill. Companies continue to add new products and features in this highly competitive market.
Video borescopes got to be dominant in aviation because of their high resolution and ability to show and capture images, says Doug Kindred, Gradient Lens president and chief scientist. You can do it with fiber optic scopes but it takes twice as long and you have to have a cart of equipment, including a separate camera and monitor.
Olympus
Olympus continues to evolve its top-of-the-line IPLEX NX, while adding a trio of products – the IPLEX GT, GX, and G Lite.
The GX, GT, and G Lite use scalar measurement as a standard feature, sizing objects in comparison to a reference defect, according to the company’s web site. All three products are optionally upgradable to stereo measurement, using precise 3D coordinates, the company says.
All three servo-driven video scopes also feature TrueFeel technology, ensuring that the borescope doesn’t lag or overshoot the target, Lafleur says. “What the thumb does is what the eye sees.”
All the scopes have the same accuracy – up to 1,000th of an inch – but the NX is the most precise, or repeatable, in its measurements, he says. The NX also has added 3D modeling as an enhancement to its measurement technology. This allows users to do things like set a reference line on a complex surface like a turbine blade. Users can then rotate the line to see what they’re inspecting from multiple angles, providing a sense of depth and making it easier to specify the exact location of measurement points, the company says. “It’s like moving from painting a portrait to sculpting a bust,” Lafleur says.
ViewTech
Right in the middle of the market is ViewTech Borescopes, formerly RF System Lab. ViewTech’s new VJ-3 borescope offers improved lighting, image quality, and ruggedness, as well as rechargeable batteries, says Duncan White, director of sales and marketing.
The company has achieved ruggedness ratings per the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard relating to IP (ingress protection), or the ability to handle moisture and resist dust and debris. This means you can use the base unit with the screen and joystick in the rain and that it also won’t allow dust inside, White says.
He says that ViewTech sells more borescopes in the U.S. and Canada, across a wide swath of industries, than anyone else. The company doesn’t say exactly how many scopes that entails, but more than 100 are out in the field on demo a year.
The 3.9mm-diameter insertion tube version of the VJ-3 is popular in aviation, White says. Four LEDs provide up to 6,000-lux illumination. And the VJ-3 has a 16-Gbyte SD card, which can store 10,000 photos or 8 hours of video, the company says. The 3.5-inch anti-glare LCD display monitor features 640×480 resolution. The company also moved from a stainless steel insertion tube to more durable tungsten braid. The 3.9mm probe comes in lengths of 1.5 and 3.0 meters.
The price is also right, White says. The VJ-3 comes in at a range of $9,000 to $15,000, about the same spot as previous incarnations and “at or below anybody with a comparable borescope.” There is also a no-cost loaner program if a scope has been sent in for repairs.
Although commercial airlines require a borescope with measurement functionality, “we specifically left that off,” he says. But the high-end scopes with measurement capability don’t need to be used all the time, he says. Because ViewTech offers 80 percent or more of their functionality at a fraction of the cost, it makes sense to use the less expensive equipment as the workhorse for all the other things that need to be done to get more life out of the high-end equipment, he says.
ViewTech scopes are popular with general aviation engines such as the Pratt & Whitney PT6, White says. The equipment is also used to look at landing gear, avionics wiring, flap tracks, and radar domes, he says.
Mountain Air Cargo’s engine shop uses VJ-3s for everything from 1,500-hour, hot section “sneak and peek” inspections to condition inspections, says Chris Roop, engine shop lead. He uses it to look at PW100 engines in the carrier’s ATR fleet. Measurement capability would make the job easier but it’s not a necessity for everything, he says. “You scale everything out, use your noodle, and apply mathematics to it.”
The VJ-3s are user-friendly, he says, with the light source built into one unit so you don’t have to have a heavy battery-pack light source hanging around your neck when you’re trying to climb a ladder. You position the optic where you want to look and it stays there, he adds.
The images an operator sees can also be viewed on a standard video monitor. Or the equipment can be connected to a laptop and show an inspection via Skype or GoToMeeting, White says. Roop shares photos with Pratt & Whitney via email so he can talk to the OEM about whether an engine can continue operating or should have a shop visit.
The VJ-3 is mechanically articulated – when the user moves the joystick, the scope responds. “It’s like a puppet on a string,” White says. Mechanical articulation has some advantages over servo-driven operation, he says. In addition to being lower-cost and less expensive to repair, the mechanical system provides tactile feedback. “Because your thumb is moving the borescope, you can feel resistance if you hit the side,” he explains.
High-end, servo-driven scopes can be a pain, Roop says. You have to be precise about where you’re trying to look because you can overshoot. You have to “pre-think” it and release the switch early. He likes the VJ-3’s mechanical articulation and its large angle of view. “That’s really nice to look around corners,” he says.
Gradient Lens
Gradient Lens plans to jump ahead in the middle market with the launch this summer of the company’s Hawkeye V3 video borescope, as a companion to the V2 equipment rolled out in 2012. “We’ve worked hard on fundamentals” like resolution, image quality, and illumination, Kindred says.
A mechanic inspects an engine using the ViewTech VJ-3. The VJ-3 comes in at a very reasonable price range of $9,000 to $15,000. ViewTech Image.
The 4mm-diameter scope will incorporate a high-definition, full-megapixel camera, Kindred explains, with six times the resolution of the current V2 product and three times the resolution of high-end competitors, he predicts. The 5.5-inch-diagonal display will be sunlight readable and the image quality will be comparable to what you get on an iPhone 7 or 8, he says. Illumination will be brighter, employing a 35-watt LED. The LED will be mounted inside of the base and the light transmitted to the tip via fiber optics.
The V3 will move from manual to servo-driven articulation. An advantage with servos is that you can go much further and maintain the range of articulation much better, Kindred says. It will also add Wi-Fi, so that a technician can be doing an inspection while his boss watches it on an iPad.
The V3 will be very competitively priced, he says, starting at around $10,000 vs. around $8,000 for the V2. “We don’t make a Rolls-Royce or a Mercedes. We make a product that’s extremely good quality” but that is not loaded with features like measurement.
Gradient borescopes are typically used in applications, such as inspecting turbine blades, combustion chambers, and fuel injection nozzles, to look for problems, such as cracks, he says. Some people, however, also use them to inspect areas of the airframe and wiring harnesses.
The company’s aviation focus is more on business and general aviation, including helicopters, for organizations such as police and sheriff departments.
The most important thing for aviation customers is image quality, he says. “What it really boils down to is you have to be able to tell whether something is a very small crack in a turbine blade or maybe a tiny piece of lint.”
ViewTech scopes are popular for use with general aviation engines such as the Pratt & Whitney PT6. The equipment is also used to look at landing gear, avionics wiring, flap tracks and radomes. ViewTech image.
Measurement
Some users have a requirement for measuring borescopes. You’ve got to have high image quality because you’re doing a visual inspection, but you’ve also got to have measuring capability, says Craig Grave, owner of AIM (Aircraft Inspection & Management), a maintenance facility that works on a wide range of engines, including Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce and GE.
If you find something in a borescope inspection, the manufacturer wants to know the size of the damage, he says. AIM uses a GE video borescope with 3D phase measuring. “It provides a 3D image on the screen that you can rotate around and see damage,” he says. The equipment is very pricey, however. By the time you get all the accessories and extra tips, it’s probably close to $70,000.
The unit itself is not overly complicated, but accomplishing an inspection takes skill – not everybody can do it, he says. You have to be able to manipulate the scope, get it into the right position, and get a good picture in order to do the measurement.
The other challenge is understanding what you’re looking at, he says. For example, is it a crack or a shadow? Sometimes an image looks like a crack, but when you get the scope into a better position you can see that that it’s something else, like a coating loss, Grave says.
The Olympus IPLEX GX/GT with gearbox. Olympus says this model has interchangeable insertion tubes and light sources and an 8-inch touch screen. Olympus image.
Do’s and Don’ts
Pay attention to the operator specifications, Roop says. Use the right chemicals to clean the lenses because the wrong chemicals can damage or fog them. And never use a borescope inside a hot engine, he adds. He usually waits four hours in order to let the engine get below a certain temperature range.
Shown left is a PT6A repair and on the right is a PW535A blade inspection. ViewTech images.The ViewTech Borescopes team was established in 2008 as RF System Lab with the goal of bringing affordable, high-quality video borescopes to the market.
And don’t drop it, White says. Warranties protect against manufacturing defects. They are not insurance policies against breaking the equipment. Also remember to steer the borescope out, he says. The borescope may have gone around some bends and turns during the inspection process. “You can’t just yank it out.”
“Don’t walk backwards” while guiding it out, he adds, and have your hand ready to catch the camera so that it doesn’t swing down and hit the deck. The cameras aren’t that fragile, he says, but if the quartz lens hits the floor from 4 to 5 feet up with any force, it won’t be too long before it shatters.
Another basic rule is to put the borescope back in the case when you’ve finished using it, White says. A common breakage scenario is when the scope is left on a table. Before long somebody comes along and sets a heavy part on top of it.
Also don’t put the scope back in the case with the tip hanging out, Kindred says. And don’t try to yank out the probe if the tip gets hooked around something. You have to straighten it out before you remove it. “It’s just a matter of being impatient and not thinking.”
Borescopes are fairly delicate pieces of equipment, AIM’s Grave says. The company has around 10 scopes because they tend to break fairly often, he says. One thing on his wish list is faster repairs.
You must be logged in to post a comment.